Voluntary organized sport in Denmark and Norway

¹ The authors would like to thank Pasi Koski and Berit Skirstad for useful comments on a previous draft of this essay.

Abstract

Sport organized through voluntary organizations is widespread in the Scandinavian countries, and voluntary organized sport in Denmark and Norway is the topic of this essay. The two cases are compared along a set of dimensions: voluntary sector in general and voluntary sport in particular (organizational structures, level of participation, type of activity and ideology, resources and relations to the public sector). Having described the two cases, we try to understand and explain similarities and differences between them. We end the essay with a discussion of some future challenges for voluntary organized sport in the Scandinavian countries.

Notes

¹ The authors would like to thank Pasi Koski and Berit Skirstad for useful comments on a previous draft of this essay.

² We have chosen the term association to describe what we could have called organizations or clubs. None of the terms are wrong or directly misleading, and we have chosen association both because it gives some correct connotations (local, democratic, voluntary) and because this is closest to the term most often used in the two countries involved (forening, lag),

³ Ibsen, Frivilligt arbejde i idrætsforeninger; Slack, Understanding Sport Organizations: The Application of Organization Theory; Wollebæk and Selle, Det nye organisasjonssamfunnet; Wollebæk, Selle, and Lorentzen, Frivillig innsats.

⁴ Curtis, Baer and Grabb, ‘Nations of Joiners’; Salamon and Sokolowski, Global Civil Society.

⁵ Wollebæk and Selle, Det nye organisasjonssamfunnet.

⁶ Ibsen, ‘Foreningerne og de frivillige organisationer’.

⁷ Based on a separate comparative analysis of data from the Norwegian study of associations in Hordaland from 2000, and the corresponding Danish study of the associations in Funen County in 2004. Boje and Ibsen, Frivillighed og nonprofit i Danmark; Wollebæk and Selle, Det nye organisasjonssamfunnet.

⁸ Wollebæk and Selle, Det nye organisasjonssamfunnet.

⁹ Ibsen, ‘Foreningerne og de frivillige organisationer’.

¹⁰ Bille et al. , Danskernes kultur; Larse, Idrætsdeltagelse og idrætsforbrug i Danmark; Ottesen and Ibsen, Idræt, motion og hverdagsliv.

¹¹ Seippel, ‘Sport in Civil Society’.

¹² One of the reasons for this difference might be, that the local sports associations in Norway must abide to the statute norm of NOC, which means that if they have no own written rules the NOC statute norms will be their rules.

¹³ Based on a separate comparative analysis of data from both countries: Wollebæk and Selle, Det nye organisasjonssamfunnet; Boje and Ibsen, Frivillighed og nonprofit i Danmark.

¹⁴ According to NOC, 2001.

¹⁵ Ibsen, Foreningsidrætten i Danmark.

¹⁶ Ibsen, Foreningsidrætten i Danmark

¹⁷ Ibsen, Foreningsidrætten i Danmark

¹⁸ Enjolras and Seippel, Norske idrettslag 2000; Ibsen, Foreningsidrætten i Danmark.

¹⁹ Ibsen, Frivilligt arbejde i idrætsforeninger.

²⁰ Ibsen, Foreningsidrætten i Danmark.

²¹ Seippel, ‘The Meanings of Sport‘.

²² Seippel, ‘Sport and Social Capital’.

²³ Ibsen, Frivilligt arbejde i idrætsforeninger; Ibsen, Dansk idrætspolitik; Selle and Svåsand, ‘Cultural Policy, Leisure and Voluntary Organizations in Norway’; Wollebæk and Selle, Det nye organisasjonssamfunnet.

²⁴ Ibsen, Foreningsidrætten i Danmark; Wollebæk and Selle, Det nye organisasjonssamfunnet. The analysis is based on answers from the associations to identical questions in a questionnaire as part of the two nations’ participation in the ‘Johns Hopkins University Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project’. To illustrate the associations’ role in society, their own self-reported position with regards to the two attitude dimensions was studied. In the first dimension, a differentiation is made between whether the association primarily concentrates on its own members (member-oriented), or whether the association works for wider groups or society as a whole (socially-oriented). In the second dimension, a differentiation is made between whether the associations are primarily a form of collective activity with other people who share the same interests (consensus-oriented), or whether looking after and fighting for interests and values are, to a particular degree, the objectives of the associations (conflict-oriented).

²⁵ Seippel, ‘Sport in Civil Society’ (2008).

²⁶ Ibsen, Foreningsidrætten i Danmark.

²⁷ Enjolras and Seippel, Norske idrettslag 2000; Ibsen, Frivilligt arbejde i idrætsforeninger.

²⁸ Ibsen, ‘Foreningerne og de frivillige organisationer’; Seippel, ‘Sport in Civil Society’ (2008).

²⁹ Wollebæk, Selle and Lorentzen, Frivillig innsats.

³⁰ For more on public funding of sport, see essay by Bergsgard and Nordberg, this volume.

³¹ Ibsen, Dansk idrætspolitik.

³² Hedström, Dissecting the Social.

³³ Peters, Institutional Theory.

³⁴ Stinchcombe, ‘Social Structure and Organizations’.

³⁵ Goksøyr, Kropp, kultur og tippekamp.

³⁶ Hansmann, ‘Economic Theories’.

³⁷ Gundelach, ‘Er protesterne og bevægelserne forsvundet?’

³⁸ Ottesen and Ibsen, Idræt, motion og hverdagsliv.

³⁹ Ibsen, Foreningsidrætten i Danmark.

⁴⁰ Eikås, ‘New Public Management’; Klausen and Ståhlberg, New Public Management i Norden.

⁴¹ DiMaggio and Powell, ‘The Iron Cage Revisited’.

⁴² Carroll and Hannan, The Demography of Corporations.